Men's Six Nations, Week Five

Super Saturday is here, and as we go into it all the matches could matter. Even if Ireland sew up the title in the second game, France v England always matters, even if it can’t really affect the title.

The Matches

Wales v Italy

First I want to say congratulations to Italy. They’ve built from their draw that should have been a win against France, then their home win against Scotland and come to Wales and backed it up with a win and their best points total ever in the M6N. For most of the game they were firmly in control and while the Welsh defence managed to keep Italy to 11-0 at halftime and only 24 points at full time, with only two tries, for most of the game that was the only bright spot from a Welsh perspective.

Until about the 60th minute, more specifically the arrival of Grady and Rowlands, the Italian defence swallowed up almost all the Welsh attack easily. They came forward quickly, and every attack was pushed back, phase after phase, until they had to kick. This was helped by a simplistic attack, single runners that the defence could gang-tackle. Occasionally, from a set piece or other moments, there was either penetration or outflanking of the defence, which was followed by a handling error…

In the last twenty minutes or so, Rowlands to some extent and Grady to a much greater one, dented or smashed their way through the Italian defensive line and the Welsh attack clicked on go forward ball. Were the Italians also taking their foot off the pedal? Maybe. But when the match finished 24-21 there must have been a few nerves appearing.

Beard has been great for Wales as a lineout and maul specialist, and with a front row and back row full of ball carriers the fact he’s not really a ball carrier hasn’t been an issue in previous years. However, currently Wales only have one natural carrier between those six positions, he needs to improve as a carrier or he’s going to risk not being picked until they improve. That will come, but we’re not there yet.

Tompkins I think is in a worse position. Last week Watkins, in combination with Costelow, made the Welsh attack work far better. This week, I don’t think Grady has the whole package, but he made it work better too. I think Tompkins might have slid down in the pecking order, great servant though he’s been.

The rest of them, pretty collectively, had a bad game, all at the same time. Cam Winnett excepted. I thought last week England had a game ahead of their projected curve, this was the opposite of that for Wales, and both of those things are going to happen with rebuilding teams. The good end papered over what was a bad game from Wales, the worst of the tournament in my opinion. But overall, this squad has improved, can continue to improve, and might be challenging to win before 2027.

This was not Wales' finest hour. But it was Italy’s best M6N so far. Congratulations to them. I hope they continue their progress into the years to come.

Ireland v Scotland

This was another game with a lot of consequences. Both teams were keen to bounce back after unexpected defeats last week. If Ireland win, they seal the M6N title. If Scotland win they secure a triple crown, and if they win by some crazy margin, they’re in pole position for the title, but England are in with a shout.

The game was nervy, the weight of hope and expectation all too clear to see. Scotland were unlucky twice, first a Christie charge down bounced out, instead of straight, when he was the only one who could have fallen on it to score a try. Five minutes later, an overthrow at the other end of the park, straight to Sheehan, who crashed over from 5m, effectively a 14 point swing.

After that, it really remained a match that was fought over, tooth and nail. Ireland were ahead, just, at the half, and ahead, slightly more, at full time. However, if either of those pieces of bad luck had gone Scotland’s way, the result could have been different… Ireland had huge periods of dominance but Scotland just defended like crazy. Ireland had two tries disallowed, one for a knock on over the line, one for held up. A late Scottish try and Ireland sneak home by four.

People have been declaring this Irish side one of the top two sides in the world. The last two weeks suggest that’s not true. England and Scotland have worked out how to stop them. Scotland got a bit unlucky and didn’t quite win, England arguably, certainly in my opinion, got lucky and did. (I should say, I don’t think they got lucky in terms of bounce of the ball or similar, more that they went and everything clicked, pretty much on both sides of the ball for very long periods of the match. I think this is ahead of schedule, they might be expecting this as a regular thing by the tail end of next year, but getting it out of them now is lucky, not expected.)

Equally, I’m not saying Ireland are not good. It’s possible we’ll find New Zealand and South Africa will suffer with the new players, and in New Zealand's case their new coach. Will Ireland maintain their hoodoo over the All Blacks and be a real challenge for the Springboks? This is where I have my doubts. Likewise, as France regain their mojo, they’ll look to beat up the Irish, following this template. The cracks in their system are there and we know it, more importantly the other coaches around the world know it. The question for the next three years is going to be whether Farrell can change the system enough to remain competitive without breaking it? Honestly, I don’t know, he’s evolved it rather than massively changing it since taking it over from Schmidt. Can he actually develop a new system?

Although I think Scotland were unlucky, I think the SRU might be wondering about replacing Townsend. He’s got a Scotland team that are virtually identical across the end of the World Cup cycle, have talent, arguably best in the world talent, scattered all around, but he doesn’t seem able to get them to put it all together. Perhaps another coach could?

Congratulations Ireland.

France v England

I haven’t looked at the English press reports on the match yet, I’m sure they’ll be crowing about how close England pushed France, how far this team has come. But if you stop and look, England scored three tries in one six minute blitz, either side of half time, when France were down a man. Now, you can frame that as taking advantage of the moment, sure, but you can also frame it as been unable to score against the fifteen man French defence. They also scored at the end against the full side, but one try is not going to win you many games.

France, on the other hand, pressed and pressed throughout the game, and while they didn’t always score tries, they kept the scoreboard ticking as England gave away penalties in their scramble defence, attempting to kill the huge breaks that the French attack was punching through their lines seemingly at will. It was fitting that the game was won by a penalty kick from Ramos. The fact that the English came back and forced France to win this way made the game more exciting for the theoretical neutral, but when England are playing there isn’t really a neutral in the whole of Europe, possibly not the whole of the world of rugby.

I mentioned last week that when South Africa instituted this defence, it took them a load of games to get it right, consistently. I don’t know if last week was just a fluke of everything coming together early, and this was regression to the mean, or the key changes at 9 and 12 for France empowered the French attack to rip through the English defence in a way Ireland couldn’t manage. Perhaps a bit of both - the English (and SA) blitz defence is structured to stop teams going around them and to stop teams punching holes through the middle. France did both with ease, by selecting huge runners who shifted the two or three guys trying to tackle them backwards and then presented or offloaded the ball to someone who exploited the space this created, but also with long passes to someone on the corner who tipped it on to someone outside the line. I think Ramos is a step down from Ntmack and Jalibert at 10. I’m not going to dump on him - he was asked to step into an injury gap and play out of position, and blew a bit hot and cold rather than being more consistent - I’d still have him in that French side in a 15 jersey, although Barré is looking good as a challenger or injury replacement.

England have positives to take from this match and this championship. They finished third, which is the highest they’ve managed for several years, and they showed against Ireland that they can compete at the top level. In Freeman, Feyi-Waboso and Furbank they have a young, but very talented back three. Certainly in Earl they have a back rower playing at the top of his game right now. And while they’re not undergo a rebuild in the same way as Wales, they are changing both their attacking and defending systems, those will take time to bed down with the players.

France seem to have turned a corner though, and while their mojo may not be fully back, they’ve found their formula and it should carry them through to 2027.

Happy Coaches

Quesada top I think. Italy have reversed their normal good start and decline, got their best ever result overall and kicked on from what could have been a crushing draw rather than win, to beat Scotland and then dominate most of the match against Wales. They’re not the complete outfit yet, but this is far better than we’ve seen from Italy in years.

Farrell next. Although I have my doubts about the longer term, and he’ll be disappointed with the last two weeks, back to back M6N champions is not to be sniffed at.

Galthié in third. France have bounced back, in style, from that horror show against Italy and finished second to Ireland. The performances against Wales and England were not complete, but they were good and definitely going in the right direction, with a number of very young players in some key positions.

Honestly, picking the order of these three was pretty hard, and I almost put them as first equal, or Farrell and Galthié as second equal. They’re all happy, with some reservations, but for different reasons.

Borthwick I’m not sure he’s really unhappy, but he’s behind the other three. There is a lot to be happy about - if you’d offered him third with wins over Italy, Wales and Ireland at the start of the tournament, I’m sure he’d have bitten your arm off. Yes, losing to Scotland will hurt, and the loss yesterday will hurt him and the side, but there are positives to take from it, as well as a whole bunch of lessons. On balance, more good than bad for England.

Townsend is I think, for today, in fifth. His team went to Ireland with a chance of winning the Triple Crown. They came up short, but until quite late it was close. But this is a generational Scottish team, and they aren’t delivering to their potential. Is that on him? Should he get out of the way and let someone else try to get them to do better?

Gatland reportedly offered his resignation after this performance and, based on today alone. He’s the most unhappy. But I think, overall, he’s got positives to take, lessons he’s learnt. Some of those lessons take time, forwards can’t add 20kg of muscle overnight, but they’re learning, he’s learning about them and overall things are getting better despite today.

Notable Players

Normally I do a team of the tournament, but I think I’m not going to do that this year. I pick by units, the Irish Front Row, the French Second Row and so on, and the main rules are 1) if you win a Grand Slam there has to be a good reason not to pick you and 2) consistency matters. This would lead to some funny picks as well as some that probably make sense.

I think the Irish and Scottish front rows are the only ones in contention, that’s OK. Likewise, the Irish half backs would get picked, and I’m ok with that. The Irish and Italian centres are are the only two in discussion, and that’s probably OK, injury rules out of the Scottish and English pair, form and a red card the French, form the Welsh.

But then we have the Welsh back three as the only stable group. Winnett certainly deserves discussion, possibly even to be included if I picked individuals. On that basis, I could argue for Dyer, but not Adams. I probably want van der Merwe and Penaud though, although Lowe and Dyer have to be in the discussion. Feyi-Waboso misses out because he didn’t play enough games. If Ramos hadn’t moved to 10, I’d have been happy with the French back three, the Irish had too many problems with injury that ruled them out.

The second and back rows are a complete mess, because teams shifted these around a lot, with suspension, injury and tactical choices. Most teams had at least one, sometimes two, games with a lock playing 6 and someone extra playing in the second row. France just picked a whole slate of new, huge youngsters. I just don’t know who to pick here.

In the back row, I think all of the French back three, Reffell and Wainwright from Wales, Earl from England, Doris from Ireland had good tournaments - not necessarily every single game, but the majority of them, typically all but one or all of them. Christie from Scotland was outstanding, but not as often. Negri missed the first three games, but was excellent in the last two for Italy, Cannone was generally good when he played, I think Vintcent only started one game, played from the bench in two, but impressed. I guess I’d pick Cros, Olivon and Aldritt as my unit, even though they had some skips, because they were the only side where I noted all three of them.

In the second row, Jenkins, the young Welsh captain looked classy throughout. Beirne looked solid. The French cut and changed with injury, form, a red card and so on. Flament looked great when he was back though. The Scots seemed to swap around a bit, but their lineout and scrum worked well. Chessum looked good for the English.

There’s a good team in there, but not a clear team unit by unit. The backrow breaks the rules, there’s not a really solid unit at second row.

If I had to pick though: Irish front row Scottish Locks French Back Row Irish Half Backs Italian Centres And, despite my misgivings Welsh Back Three.